by Danyel Smith
“You got it under control?” Dart said. “You see for yourself?”
Eva was shamed, and overcome. She tasted Dart in her throat. Reflexively, her palm went to her belly. I need, Eva thought, to calm down. I need for this baby not to be true. I need for Dart to say something that makes some sense to me.
He stepped back into his room. She faced him from the bathroom doorway. Cramming clothes into a duffel, Dart paused, felt around, then pulled out a small brownish jar. He set it atop the television and looked at it for a few seconds, to remember he’d placed it there.
Eva was naked and soaking in the tub when Dart came back to the bathroom. Like it had been slit, her right wrist hung limply over the rim.
The bathroom was muggy.
“You’re wearing the bracelet,” he said, surprised.
Eva was relaxed in the water. She could reach the faucets easily. Turn them back on if she wanted, or turn them off.
“I didn’t see it before.”
“What?” Eva said, facing him. “You like it?”
Dart peeled off his clothes. “I’m not having sex,” he said, tone conversational now. “You treat it like it’s nothing.”
He stepped in. Water sloshed. Dart sat crosswise, at Eva’s feet, his knees bent, facing the door. He couldn’t be more folded.
“You’re comfortable like that?”
“Are you comfortable,” Dart said, “the way you are? I got that bracelet for you because of what you told me in Carmel. About your mom. Your real mom. I saw it at a stand in the airport in Miami. It was … serendipitous.”
Eva looked at the bracelet. Dart got me this?
Steam rose stinking of dried apricots.
That’s what it is.
A metallic sugar-vinegar smell of damp drying fruit. The bathroom transformed into a windowless roomful. In his cramped position, Dart was perfectly still.
“Walk out of here,” he said. “With me.”
His words were a soft siren, the story in all her private songs.
Hey baby, let’s get away, go someplace far.
Let me take you on an escapade.
Down icy lanes, under a glass blue sky—this is living.
This is living.
“Not to a physical place,” Dart said. “A real, true mental one. We can live. Get away from this madness. It’s dying anyway. Hip hop’s over. Pop is a joke. We get out before it sucks us down. See who we are without it.”
I got two tickets to paradise.
Eva hated talk about searches for self; hated searches for self, period, felt they were detours from what one ought to be doing—which was working for a living. It’s what depressed people do. Imagine there’s some parallel life being played out in which they are the hero. The superstar. The free and good one. They search for it around every corner. What you do is regulate what goes on within, and that what goes on without is to be responded to, dealt with, endured, accepted. The top of Eva’s head felt thin and hot. Her mind screeched. Pick something do it, and keep it moving.
Make a decision, with no advice from anyone.
She wanted to tell Dart that she wasn’t into daydreaming or disenchantment or restlessness. She wanted to make him understand that staring at the horizon, trying to ascertain one’s place in the world, was vanity. But instead, Eva reached for a loofah. It would be waste of time to explain to him that she wasn’t going anyplace but back to work, back to figuring out what to do about Sunny, and back to deciding what to do about possibly being pregnant.
Eva washed herself and found solace, as usual, in proactivity.
Dart unfolded himself, turned so he was between her legs, his back tight against her chest. The skin on his back was mottled, and Eva was nauseated. She let herself think that Dart’s craziness made him talk about the bracelet. So she felt sorry for him. But then Eva remembered that Sunny had noticed it, too. Her hand twitched, and the bracelet shifted on her wrist.
“We’re meant,” Dart said, pressing his back even more tightly against her. “You found the bracelet. I didn’t think anyone would steal it, hanging from the doorknob. Not like it’s worth anything. Except to you.”
Eva pushed him forward a bit, then lifted her hand in front of him. “You left this on the door?” A weak cuff, it dangled from her wrist sunrise side up.
He sneered ugly for a second, but it faded. “I got it for you because the bracelet has the feel of the Out Islands, Eva. Cat Island is where we should go.”
When Dart started in with Cat Island details, it was clear to Eva. The bracelet hadn’t been Ron’s to give.
“… Obeah bottles strung from branches,” Dart said. “Dangling bottles filled with graveyard dirt and hair and fingernails, protecting folks’ property from thieves. We can find a healer. For me, and for … you.”
Ron had given Eva nothing, as her real mother had liked to say, but a hard time.
“… we’ll see goats,” Dart said dreamily. “We can climb—or walk, it’s really just a walk—up Mount Alvernia.”
The bath had cooled. The water seemed suddenly stagnant. Eva pushed Dart far forward.
“Don’t be typical of yourself,” he said sharply. Dart ran a soapless cloth over his face and under his arms and stepped from the big tub. “Don’t you need a relationship? A man? Even for a week?”
Eva climbed from the tub, shivering. He handed her his damp towel. She held it in her fingers.
“Not a buncha niggas,” Dart said boldly. “One. This one.”
“The choice between fucking one and fucking a buncha is the choice between one roller coaster and another.” Eva’s skin rose in goose bumps.
“You’re already riding this one.” He took his towel from her. “You found the bracelet. You think I’m so foul, but you have it on.” He grabbed a fluffy clean towel from the shelf above the toilet and pushed it at her.
“I have to go to the gospel brunch,” Eva said. She toweled her body crossly and way past dry.
Dart bellowed like there was a score of skeptics in the room. “Given how you DIS everything not in your everyday sphere, I shouldn’t even SAY what I’m about to say.” He looked hard at Eva, like maybe she was worthy of special information. He pointed at her like a quirky person on the street calling out a stranger. An eccentric, disheveled person who haunts you because of the copper connection crazy people often have to the truth.
Eva felt ignorant of her own body. Something inside her was speaking up, and she didn’t know if it was her conscience or a baby or if those were the same thing. The not knowing was loud and strong, and even wrapped in the long towel, Eva was abnormally uncomfortable to be naked. Eva wanted Dart to say what he had to say so she could put her clothes back on and get away from him and take care of her personal business. Her breasts ached like a few veins were all that kept iron spheres from falling through her skin and to the floor.
They get sore, though, right before I start my period.
Dart mistook her discomfort for disdain. It was an error people made about Eva, whether she was pregnant or not.
“Just because it’s the name of a SONG,” Dart said, still pointing, and starting to perspire. “What I’m about to say is NOT automatically stupid.”
“Okay.” I need a bra on right now. I need to be in my own bathroom.
“DON’T patronize,” he said in his booming voice. “Don’t.”
“I’m not.” But she’d crossed her arms under her breasts.
“In my estimation, and in the estimation of a lot of other people—”
“Spit it out, Dart. I’m not really desperate for background.”
“—the Age of Aquarius officially began last January, 1997. It was the end of the Age of Pisces. This heralds the beginning of the End Times. Some think it’s the beginning of a New World Order. Opinions differ, but—”
He is crazy. But she listened.
“—the fact is, things are changing, and I need to be where I can contemplate that. Come with, Eva. Don’t look at it like a spiritual thing. I know
that freaks you out. Look at it like this: Cat Island’s your type of spot—attached to nothing, in the middle of a treacherous ocean, happy to be pretty.”
His voice was coming from far away.
“I know,” he said solemnly, “there’s more to you than what you let everybody see.”
Eva ran the hand with the bracelet over her long belly.
Dart lunged toward Eva, pulled her hand away from her stomach, and kissed her knuckles. He fell to his knees and looked up, her hands in his. Dart’s eyes had dark circles and the circles shone like he was tired of seeing things differently. Eva was overwhelmed and she was convinced.
I’m ‘bout to go see my future. Leave my worries behind.
CHAPTER 9
Eva, back in her room, glad that it was made up and brand-new.
Eva dressed, on her bed, sitting by the nightstand.
Can’t keep staring at it. Two pink lines on a stick.
Phone book’s right here. Someone has to confirm this. Have to speak to a professional.
Nassau Family Planning Association. Right nearby.
Dial the number.
“’Tis Malinda. How can I help you today?”
State the situation. That you took the test. That there are two pink lines. Like welts on a tiny palm.
“There’s been mornin’ sickness, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Sleepiness?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been working, so—”
Radio in Malinda’s background. Buzzy as a shortwave in a war movie.
“The possibility, ma’am, is that you could be more pregnant than you think. First day of your last period?”
Period. Yes. Count. What’s that song on her radio? It’s one of Ron’s groups? Or that other, sad one that Myra pumps all the time?
“Ma’am?”
“Forty-four days ago.”
“Forty—”
“Little over six weeks.”
“T’was normal?”
“Yeah, I think.” Eva hated her answers to Malinda’s questions. “I mean, no. Shorter, maybe, than usual.”
“You could be pregnant … for nine weeks or more. Some bleeding, especially around the time of what would ‘ave been your regular, most recent period, ‘appens to a lot of women in their first trimester. Ma’am … Ma’am?”
“Yes.” Formal now, in the face of her world folding in.
“Are you staying on New Providence with us for a while? Or ‘eadin’ back to the States soon? Did you want to come over? Make an appointment? S’what we recommend.”
The static from Malinda’s radio overtook the song. Eva wanted to curse her. Order her to adjust the damn dial. Eva could hear the song, but she couldn’t hear it. Eva could hear everything else—the hum of the minibar, the weight in the hem of the curtain brushing the base of the sliding door. Eva half-heard two men exchange pleasantries in the corridor, heard their shirts brush against the other’s, the press of shoes into the carpet, the skirl of a luggage cart. Eva wanted to hear the song on Malinda’s radio.
“No,” Eva said. “But thanks. I’ll see a doctor at home.”
“Best wishes to you, then.”
No awestruck belly-touching.
No Scotch-sipping.
There was the getting dressed, and the dodging of the gospel brunch.
Eva didn’t reach for her sundress or her newest lambskin purse with the ostrich-skin pockets. Instead she grabbed her passport, flipped through it, and then stuffed shorts and tees in her Nike pack, slipped into a bathing suit and a stretchy yellow lace skirt she considered as all-purpose as dungarees. Grabbed her woven bag, toothbrush, and the coconut oil. It was a typical gift from Sunny—FedExed from someplace far, customer service calling to correct the transposed address, or the zip code, only thing intact being Eva’s name and her cell number and what Eva liked to believe was the sweet spirit in which it was sent. The present was Philippine virgin coconut oil with “miraculous” fats, the label said, like the fats in breast milk. The printed label made to seem casually handwritten, as if a cheery Filipina, after a walk through her garden, had pressed the oil herself and passed it corked in green glass to a deserving friend.
Eva walked back into her bathroom. She had to pee. Again. Still on the toilet, she wrapped the pregnancy test stick in tissue and placed it in the lined wastebasket.
I am pregnant. Again. I’ve always known what to do. I always go to the clinic. Go to sleep. Wake up free. Solo.
Get up. Go.
Eva placed her bags near her on the bed. She looked hard at her portable disc player and earbuds and CDs. She had enough music in her head. She thought of Malinda’s radio and wished she could beam over to the Nassau Family Planning Association if only to twist the dial, make things clear. Eva hated noisy half-sounds, the itch between stations. Just remembering Malinda’s calming, half-congratulatory voice made Eva pick up the phone and put her thoughts into action.
She dialed Dart. To him, and to her reflection in her vanity’s oval mirror, Eva said, “We going? Or what?”
The plan was to meet Sunny, get her to the gospel brunch, then to get to Cat Island.
Eva walked in the open door to Sunny’s suite. She and her brother were arguing. Dart had a nylon do-rag tied around his head. Hanes white Beefy-T and long denim shorts.
“Don’t DRINK,” Dart bellowed. “Unless it’s tea, Sun.” He looked at Eva. “Hullo. Doing what you said. No alcohol. See me doing it.”
“I drink too much now?” Sunny looked at Eva. “This is the type of conversation you and him have?”
“Not that you drink too much,” Eva said soothingly “Just that it’s not cool for you. On singing days. That’s all. And you have to do ‘Lift Every Voice’ at the brunch.”
Sunny drained her pillar. Then she used it in the small bar like a shovel for more ice chips.
“Let’s keep it movin’,” Eva said to Sunny. “We came down here for a reason.” The conventioneers distrust you. “Every director from every urban station is still here.” They think you treat fans and radio as afterthoughts. They feel taken for granted. They didn’t invite you here. I cajoled them. “They love you already. Especially after last night.” I wined people on two coasts, and in the boring-ass middle of this country. I lied about how you love them. Apologized for shit you don’t know you did, and for shit you did and reveled in. Told them fictitious sad stories about your childhood. “So, it’ll be an easy crowd today.” I told some you were mid-breakdown, told others that you were on the comeback from one. Turned you into an infant so they’d feel like devils if they chose not to em-brace you.
“Then why do I have to do it?” Sunny poured cola and rum into her glass.
Because what else are you going to do? These people know the game. They are the game. They know how and why I lie. And they don’t give a shit. By coming to the showcase last night, and to the brunch today, they’re paying me back for my effort. They’re paying me back for the wine.
“BECAUSE,” Dart said. His eyes looked bigger and set deeper, his jawbones sharp and burned. Sunny and Eva paid him no mind.
“Because the album’s in eleven weeks,” Eva said. “These people need to hear you sing about marching on until victory is won.”
“Three months. And I’m only doing the one song.”
With her nip, Sunny flounced to her bedroom. From behind the almost-closed door she said, “I heard you can get real goosefoot down here. Amaranth, and lemongrass. From the rainforests. Supposed to be good for the voice. The whole body. I want some before you all do whatever it is you’re about to do. ‘Cause I know you ain’t going to this brunch.”
“Sun—” Eva started.
“That’s in BELIZE,” Dart said, geographic homeopathy being his strong suit. “Goosefoot is in Belize. We’re in the BAHAMAS. NORTH of the equator. In the ATLANTIC Ocean.” It was like he was saying south of HELL. In the ATROCIOUS Ocean. “They DON’T HAVE rainforests here.”
Sunny looked from the door of her room
, pissed. “As a matter of fact, I’ll get to the brunch with Vic.”
“Sun, you have to—”
“Take Dart, please. I’m going to the shit no makeup, my own hair. So I’m fine. Go on.”
Any other time, Eva would have babysat. But she and Dart had places to go. They walked from the suite, picked up their bags from where they’d dropped them in the hall, and jogged to the elevator.
We could go to a bar. No. Doesn’t strike me as a drinker.
Eva knew what was better than food, or a natural gas ride: a crisp, swanky spot to lay your head. So after the 1994 Innovative Music for Innovators festival in Monterey, Eva’s assistant had quickly booked rooms for Eva, Sunny, and D’Artagnan at a sprawling golfers’ hotel in Carmel, just up the road from Monterey. Eva’d ditched Hakeem. Said they’d meet him for dinner, had no intention of showing. Eva suggested the three of them go to a movie, but Sun looked at the big bed and big bath and big fireplace and told Eva and Dart to go on ahead, she’d see them in the morning.
Eva drove Dart slowly down Carmel’s main strip. The Pacific bordered it, but all else in Carmel’s four-block downtown was Lilliputian and neat. Between mute bistros and bars, there were jewelers’ displays bare but for blue velvet cases. A petite public library rose from squared bramble. Galleries featured green granite dolphins, Dali prints, and big blank-eyed black figurines playing saxophones and wearing jazzy suspenders—art that spoke to Eva about introspection and aspiration.
She parked. Eva and Dart walked a bit, then paused before Realtors locked in full flower. Eva was mesmerized.
FANTASTIC VALUE SET IN THE OAKS. BREATHTAKING
MOUNTAIN, VALLEY & GOLF COURSE VIEWS. CASUAL OPEN
STYLE & ELEGENT OVERTONES. CATHEDRAL CEILINGS &
LOTS OF SKYLIGHTS. WINDOWS & FRENCH DOORS INVITE
THE OUTDOORS IN. TASTEFUL NEW LANDSCAPING ADD TO
THE PRIVACY OF THIS FINE HOME. $850,000.